The Coming Collapse of China

Why China's Premature Bid for Hegemony Is More Fragile Than You Imagine

Everyone is starting to resist now.
by Richard Javad Heydarian

China's futile resistance

“Never trust China,” a wrathful Hong Kong protester told this author during the large-scale protests on July 14 in the Sha Tin district earlier this month.

“We are never going to give up, people are fighting to their last breath.”
What began as a focused opposition to a controversial extradition bill, which would allow Beijing to retrieve fugitives and unwanted citizens fleeing to Hong Kong, has now morphed into a generalized call for independence altogether.
Carrie Lam, the much-derided pro-Beijing Hong Kong chief executive, has offered to resign but even if she does, that won’t be enough. 

Nor would an apology and accountability for brutal police tactics against unarmed protesters. 

As protests turn increasingly violent and radicalized, there are even fears of Chinese military intervention, which could lead to a Hong Kong version of the Tiananmen massacre.

The protests in Hong Kong, however, are part of a bigger region-wide backlash against China’s premature bid for hegemony. 

From Taiwan and the Philippines to Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia, a whole host of regional states are standing up against Beijing’s neo-imperial ambitions and revisionist policies. 

China’s time-tested strategy of ensuring the acquiescence of neighboring regimes through the co-optation of their corrupt elite is looking increasingly fragile. 

Moreover, Hong Kong is exhibit A of the perils of unbridled economic engagement with Beijing.

The Frontline Battle
What hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong residents are worried about is the preservation of the city-state’s unique political system. 

For them, Beijing has flagrantly violated the fundamental principles undergirding the so-called “One Country, Two Systems” regime, which was supposed to have governed Beijing-Hong Kong relations for five decades following the former British colony’s handover in 1997.
Under Xi Jinping’s rule, Hong Kong residents have seen the gradual emaciation of the promise of universal suffrage as well as the long-cherished freedoms of assembly and free press, and other civil liberties and political rights. 

China’s strongman leadership is obsessed with the “one country” at the expense of the “two systems” aspect of the bargain.
Critics argue, this has come about not only through the establishment of a de facto puppet regime in Hong Kong, but also the co-optation of the business elite, media, academy and the key institutions collectively governing the city-state. 

Beijing’s creeping intrusion is now literally concretely on display, thanks to massive state-of-the-art infrastructure projects, including the Guangzhou–Shenzhen–Hong Kong Express Rail Link (XRL) as well as the Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macau Bridge, which potently symbolize Beijing’s long reach.
Even worse, there are even fears of Beijing’s surreptitious introduction of the infamous “social credit” surveillance regime to Hong Kong. 

That system would bring dire consequences for the basic freedoms of each and every resident, including foreign journalists, academics and businessmen based in the city-state. 

Furthermore, there are even fears of Chinese military intervention. 

Ominously, China’s defense ministry spokesman Wu Qian has made it clear that it can deploy the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) for quelling protests in Hong Kong if necessary.
“We are closely following the developments in Hong Kong, especially the violent attack against the central government liaison office by radicals on July 21,” Wu said during his briefing on China’s newly released White Paper in late-July. 

Wu suggested that the PLA garrison stationed in Hong Kong is on standby mode for any potential intervention. 

“Some behavior of the radical protesters is challenging the authority of the central government and the bottom line of one country, two systems. This is intolerable.”
What’s increasingly clear with the protests is the fragility of China’s time-tested strategy of purchasing the silence and loyalty of neighboring polities through economic penetration.
“The only thing I know is that no matter how much money I earn [because of Chinese investments],” a young teenage protestor told this author on July 14, “freedom is something I can [never] earn from China.”
For many Hong Kong youngsters, the benefits of closer economic ties with China are either too concentrated among the networked elite, namely the tycoons running the city, or else any benefits are offset by how they fully undermine Hong Kongers’ basic freedoms. 

In either case, Hong Kong’s youth show little support for closer economic engagement with Mainland China, which seeks to turn Hong Kong into just another major Chinese city. 

Beijing wants to this as part of a strategy of integrating Guangdong and neighboring economic dynamos into a Greater Bay Area masterplan.

The Regional Backlash
When asked about their advice to the region, a protester related: “Regional states should not only focus on economic growth… since China is just using economic ways to influence [other countries’].”
“Regional states should focus on their freedoms and own citizens,” she added with fervent conviction, pointing at Hong Kong as an example of what happens when you over-engage with China.
The Hong Kong protests are strengthening the hands of Beijing-skeptics across the region.
This is most especially the case in Taiwan, where the incumbent President Tsai Ing-Wen is facing a concerted challenge from pro-Beijing rivals ahead of next year’s elections. 

Inspired by the Hong Kong protests, Taiwanese officials have repeatedly emphasized the risks of economic entanglement with China.
“We now have more liberty to speak for our independence,” President Tsai told this author during an interview in June. 

Tsai discussed Taiwan’s economic decoupling from China, and the relocation of investments to Southeast Asia, in recent years. 

“People have to bear in mind that you need to be independent [economically too], since China uses economics as leverage.”
Surveys suggest that the pro-independence-leaning president has public sympathy on the issue. 

The latest survey by Academia Sinica shows that a majority of Taiwanese prefers an emphasis on national sovereignty over economic engagement with China.
In the Philippines, the pro-Beijing President Rodrigo Duterte is also facing massive public backlash, especially amid his blatant quiescence following the sinking of a Filipino fishing boat by a suspected Chinese militia vessel last month.
The most recent surveys show that a super-majority of Filipinos want the government to take a tougher stance against Beijing, with as many as 93 percent of Filipinos calling on the government to take back Philippine-claimed islands in the South China Sea currently occupied by China. 

More than eight out of ten Filipinos, the same survey shows, want the government to form alliances with like-minded nations and international organizations against China’s maritime expansionism.
Additionally, China’s trust rating in the Philippines is now at a new low. 

One recent survey, conducted from June 22 to 26, showed that the majority of Filipinos (51 percent) had “little trust” in China. 

Another showed that China has a net trust rating of nearly 50 percent.
These anti-China sentiments have gone hand in hand with growing fears over “debt traps” being set under Beijing’s infrastructure investments.
“We should do away with placing our government commercial assets [as] collateral,” Philippine Supreme Court Justice Antonio Carpio, a prominent voice on the Philippine-China relations, told this author.
He has accused Beijing of negotiating questionable contracts that would allow China to seize key Philippine assets, including oil and gas in Philippine waters, in the event of a debt default.
“Let’s not be naïve [with Chinese intentions],” he added, citing the infamous case of Sri Lanka, which had to give up the control of the Hambantota port to a Chinese company following a major debt default.
Under growing public pressure, Duterte had to call for a review of all infrastructure contracts with China.
In neighboring Malaysia, however, anti-China backlash propelled an all-out regime change, as Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad rallied popular support by accusing his predecessor, Najib Razak, of selling out the nation to China under questionable multi-billion-dollar infrastructure investments.
“If you borrow huge sums of money you [will eventually] come under the influence and direction of the lender [China],” Mahathir told this author earlier this year, underscoring the threat of Beijing’s “new version of colonialism.” 

He warned of strategic “subservience” if smaller nations like the Philippines and Malaysia borrow from China beyond their “capacity to repay.”
In Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s largest nation, anti-China sentiments have taken a dark xenophobic turn even. 

Welcoming closer economic ties with China, incumbent President Joko Widodo repeatedly came under vicious attacks by his rivals during both his presidential campaigns, including false claims that he is of ethnic Chinese background.
In response to China’s intrusion into Indonesian waters, the Jokowi administration has stepped up its military presence in the North Natuna Sea area, while adopting a tough “sink the vessel” policy against illegal Chinese vessels. 

China’s perceived infringement on Indonesia sovereignty has led to a steep decline in its trust ratings. According to a Pew Research Center survey, favorable views of Beijing among Indonesians dropped from 66 percent in 2014 to 53 percent in 2018.
But perhaps it’s in Vietnam where Chinese is experiencing the greatest resistance. 

Recent years have seen massive, and often violent, anti-Beijing protests against Chinese investments in the country. 

One of the most protested schemes is the proposal for the establishment of a Chinese special economic zone on a ninety-nine-year-lease.
Meanwhile, in recent weeks, Vietnam has deployed several armed vessels to forestall China’s efforts to sabotage its energy exploration activities in the Vanguard Bank, an energy-rich area within Hanoi’s EEZ that is contested by China
China may be able to strong-arm each of its neighboring polities on a bilateral basis, but Beijing is bleeding credibility and trust across the region. 

No wonder then, the majority of respondents across Asia still prefer the United States over China as a regional leader. 

Even in Hong Kong, American flags were proudly on display during the protests. 

As one of the participants said: “We are not fighting to gain anything, [but] we are fighting not to lose anything. I am worried about Hong Kong becoming China.”

Criticism of China by Malaysia’s Mahathir resonates around East Asia, and with Beijing

While Beijing have once appreciated the long-lived Malaysian prime minister’s straight talking, China’s leaders have less taste for it now that they are the targets of his criticism
By Tom Plate

Over the decades, China’s leaders have been known to greatly respect the tell-it-like-it-is political instincts of Malaysian maestro Dr Mahathir Mohamad. 

But now you have to wonder how much love may have been lost of late.
No one in Beijing or anywhere else doubts even today that the young country doctor who was to rise to prominence as the modernising leader of Malaysia is still one crazy smart Asian. 

Of the most remarkable figures I’ve met in a long journalistic career, Dr M – as I call him – is anything but the buttoned-up prime ministerial stereotype. 

Compare him, for instance, to Sir John Major, leader of the United Kingdom between 1990 and 1997 – so very much the English gentleman, dapper in tendering fair-minded and politely expressed opinion, charming even in disagreement. 

Dr M was – and is – nothing like that. 

Now 93 and prime minister of Malaysia for a second time, it is not even clear that he has mellowed much with age. 

Compare him to a sport and you’d have him more like Australian football than cricket.
The former boss of all bosses of the massive, money-infested monster that was Malaysia’s oft-dominant party has since become the “young insurgent” toppling that party, and Dr M’s views have new sting since becoming leader anew. 

His first go as prime minister ran for 22 years, the Malaysian record, ending in 2003. 

But way back when, at least before the September 11 terror attacks, one of Islam’s craftiest, secular political minds was all but ignored by Western journalists. 

Asia then was an “Oriental” story, with the Asians in the spotlight usually crazy, poor and clueless … or communist. 

And this Malaysian Asian was, to some, either an authoritarian crank, an anti-Semite or a bizarre Muslim Machiavelli.
That began to change in 1997, when Dr M lashed out at the International Monetary Fund, triggering regional applause. 

When the brutal Asian financial crisis hit, when currencies and economies from Thailand to South Korea were leaning over cliffs, and the cash-rich but cruel IMF only proffered loans with conditions reminiscent of a mafia loan shark, Dr M told the Washington-based organisation to bug off with its venomous bailout money. 

Instead, his government outmanoeuvred Western currency speculators, their short fangs drooling, and sent Wall Street wolves packing. (Hong Kong also out-foxed predators by working behind the scenes with premier Zhu Rongji.)
The Mahathir play got Beijing’s respect. 

Largely buffered from the crisis (which lasted from 1997-1999) by having pointedly ignored Washington’s ideologically pious (but Wall Street-serving) advice to lift the currency curtain and let the good times roll, the Beijing expertariat never forgot this Malay man who could say no – judging him as craftily unbeholden to the West as anyone.

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad expects to broaden connection with China
Beijing, it was sometimes said, secretly favoured his Malaysia more than Singapore, in part because of the latter’s intimacy with Washington, of which Dr M could never be accused. 

But that was then and now we have something new: in his re-emergence as prime minister, the good doctor is now offering measured criticism of China. 

Like others in the region, Malaysia has maritime issues with Beijing, and concerns about previously negotiated bilateral development deals.
Dr M has raised questions about its pushiness in the South China Sea and perceived neo-colonial style, particularly in rolling out the ambitious (if potentially helpful) Belt and Road Initiative with peculiar financing and contracts. 

Dr M’s advice, as I decode it, is to slow down, stop bragging, be considerate of others’ interests and show flexibility.
Zhongnanhai does not appreciate this sort of chatter – imagine the nerve of this tiny Asian deer of a country instructing the big elephant on what to do! 

China is legendary for not lusting for savage sovereignty over others, but seeking to conjure a less vulgar form of continuing influence – which the elegant French have a word for: suzerainty.
One does not brazenly run over other countries with tanks or dictate their actual form of government.

The preferred way is to hover over semi-unobtrusively and earn near-worshipful respect as the de facto hoverer-in-chief with whom one does not ever mess.
A widespread question around Asia these days is how low the hovering will go, for at too low a height, hovering can become smothering, rendering China more neo-colonial than neo-wonderful. And that is where the regional image of China seems to have settled in some minds.

Beijing should thus consider respecting this re-risen sage, but these days it is not seeing things as clearly and unemotionally as it might.
The result is not that Mahathir has a problem; at 93, this proven politician is clearly having the time of what is left of his lengthy life by putting his chips on the table. 

It is Beijing that has a problem, not only because the Mahathir critique is not idiosyncratic and increasingly resonates in East Asia, but also because, in East Asia, is there a political figure (with the exception of Lee Hsien Loong, Singapore’s prime minister since 2004 and the late Lee Kuan Yew’s son) who has more earned the right to be listened to?
Over the decades Mahathir has given us all much to think about, even when not enough of us thought so much of him. 

And now he is trying to cheer China on, to continue to become rich and Asian, but without becoming crazy – and driving everyone else crazy while doing it. 

There must be a way.

Chinese Peril

India and Indonesia push back against China with a military alliance

By David Lipson

As China's growing influence dominates headlines, India and Indonesia have joined Australia in pushing back.
The two countries signed an agreement for closer military ties, and while it was not mentioned specifically in the official communique, concerns over China's military expansion in the South China Sea are clearly at the heart of the deal.
Australia has welcomed the agreement, suggesting it will work closely with India and Indonesia to ensure international law is maintained in the region.

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Jakarta was a clear display of friendship between the two countries.
That friendship extends beyond trade and tourism, with their military ties elevated to a "comprehensive strategic partnership".
Indonesian President Joko Widodo said the visit was timely in the midst of many uncertainties in the world.
"I hope the partnership will contribute to stability, peace and prosperity," he said.
President Joko Widodo said Narendra Modi's visit was timely in the midst of many uncertainties in the world.

A communique released by India's Government spoke of the importance of a rules-based Indo Pacific region — where international law, freedom of navigation and overflight are respected.
In other words, India and Indonesia are pushing back against China's growing dominance in the region.
Professor Rory Medcalf, head of the National Security College at ANU, said it was a "very serious development in regional security".
"We're seeing two key middle powers joining forces to offer an alternative to Chinese hegemony, or indeed to an uncertain American leadership," he said.
China has been taking an increasingly assertive role in the South China Sea.
Two weeks ago it landed several H-6K long range bombers on an airstrip in the disputed region — placing all of South-East Asia within range.
India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Jakarta was a clear display of friendship between the two countries. 

This year the US pushed back by dispatching warships to conduct freedom of navigation exercises through disputed sea lanes.
And in an indication America plans to continue its pressure, new language has been officially adopted by the US military.
"US Pacific command has this week changed its name, it will be called Indo Pacific command," Professor Medcalf said.
This, he said, reflected the fact that the US remained "strategically engaged with the wider Indo Pacific region".

So where does this leave Australia?
In a statement to the ABC, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said the Government welcomed the India-Indonesia partnership.
"Our three countries share a commitment to a free, open, rules-based, peaceful and prosperous region," she said.
"This includes respect for international law.
"Australia is working closely with India and Indonesia to advance these objectives."
Professor Medcalf said it showed that the idea of the Indo Pacific was "not simply some American plot as some pro-China voices have claimed."
"This development shows that Indonesia and India are beginning creatively to use their geography to position themselves at the core of new regional structures that Australia can link with, that Australia can play into," he said.
"That I think in many ways will moderate and balance Chinese power — this game is far from over."

China is taking digital control of its people to chilling lengths

The Chinese government’s unsettling new system will see citizens rated by ‘good deeds’
By John Naughton

Digital technology as social control: China’s social credit system aims to go further than paying for services via smartphone.

Watching Donald Trump trying to deal with China is like watching a clown dancing in front of an elephant. 

The US president’s entire approach is transactional – the methodology he employed in his allegedly successful career as a property developer. 

It’s all sticks and carrots, bluff and counter-bluff, aggressive bluster followed by rapid retreats. 

But then Xi Jinping leant on Trump to rescue the Chinese tech company ZTE, brought to its knees by a US ban because it had evaded sanctions on trade with Iran. 

Trump duly complied and ZTE executives breathed again.
And so it goes on. 

But behind these scenes a much bigger long‑term game is being played out. 

If it were a board game, it would be called Hegemony. (drat: a quick search reveals that there are already games on this theme.) 

Hegemony is an old concept, much beloved of Marxists, coined to describe the (military or cultural) predominance of one country or group over others. 

From the mid-1940s until 1990, the world was overshadowed by two hegemons – the US and the USSR. 

After the Soviet Union imploded, the US became the sole global hegemon. 

But now, with the rise of China, that hegemonic grip seems to be loosening.
The big issue, then, is whether we are witnessing a tectonic shift in geopolitics. 

My guess is that we are. 

Trump, who has the attention span of a newt, probably can’t see what’s going on, but the Chinese do – and so too do many parts of the US government, notably those concerned with economic development and national security, and some of the more reflective members of Congress.
What these folks understand is that hegemonic power is largely about industry – and therefore about technology. 

And the dominant industries of the future will be dominated by information technology rather than by heavy industries such as steel and cars. 

Which is why there is now so much panic in the US about wholesale theft of intellectual property by Chinese agencies and the astonishing progress that the country is making in computing and artificial intelligence.

In the old days, western snobbery led to the complacent view that the Chinese could not originate, only copy. 

One hears this less now, as visitors to China return goggle-eyed at the extent to which its people have integrated digital technology into daily life. 

One colleague of mine recently returned exasperated because he had been expected to pay for everything there with his phone. 

Since he possesses only an ancient Nokia handset, he was unable to comply and had been reduced to mendicant status, having to ask his Chinese hosts to pay for everything.
If the future is digital, therefore, a significant minority of China’s 1.4 billion citizens are already there. 

More significantly, the country’s technocratic rulers have sussed that digital technology is not just good for making economic transactions frictionless, but also for implementing sophisticated systems of social control.
In particular, they are adapting the ubiquitous “reputation rating” system by which online platforms try to get feedback on vendor and customer reliability. 

The government is beginning to roll out its social credit system, which is designed to “raise the awareness of integrity and the level of trustworthiness in Chinese society”. 

It will focus on four aspects of behaviour: “honesty in government affairs”, “commercial integrity”, “societal integrity” and “judicial credibility”.
When first conceived in 2007, the intention was to replicate the credit rating systems common in the west for assessing people’s financial creditworthiness. 

But why, thought the Chinese, stop at finance? 

Why not use the technology to assess how “good” a citizen one is? 

Everyone starts off with a baseline allowance of, say, 100 points. 

You can earn bonus points by doing “good deeds” such as separating and recycling rubbish. 

On the other hand, behaving in what is regarded (by the state) as antisocial behaviour can lose you points. 

Examples of deductible behaviour can apparently include: not showing up at a restaurant without cancelling your booking, cheating in online games, leaving false product reviews and even jaywalking. 

And if your social credit score is too low, you find yourself barred from taking flights or travelling on certain trains.
As a way of using digital technology for social control, this takes some beating. 

There are already pilot systems in operation. 

The Chinese plan to have the system fully in place by 2020. 

By which time it will be ready for export to other countries – who will be queueing up to buy it, because one of the things states do is to buy the current hegemon’s technology. 

In 2020, though, Donald Trump will still be ranting on about steel dumping and import tariffs. 

And running for a second term.

Chinese aggressions: Japan to bolster military base on island idyll

Island of Ishigaki is set to be the site for a substantial deployment of hardware and troops
By Kim Sengupta Ishigaki

A Japanese Self-Defence Forces' vehicle carrying units of Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) missiles leaves a port on Japan's southern island of Ishigaki, Okinawa prefecture.

If war is to break out, then Ishigaki would be the frontline. 

This is the island where Japan feels the most under threat from China and the place it will be installing missiles and troops amid clashes at sea, accusations and recriminations.
While international attention is on whether Games diplomacy in South Korea, with the presence of Kim Jong-un’s sister and henchmen present for the Winter Olympics, will lead to peace breaking out, tension between China and its neighbours have continued to grow.
Throughout last year, while Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un traded public insults, Beijing has been quietly bolstering its presence on the extraordinary chain of artificial isles it has been building in waters near and far taking advantage of what it calls "the strategic window of opportunity.”

Three airfields have been put into its seven bases in the disputed Spratly chain. 

There, and elsewhere, aerial photographs from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington reveal facilities awash with fortified shelters for warships, hangers for aircraft and radar, underground bunkers and missile emplacement positions.
The Chinese calls a series of archipelagos the "first island chain of defence” stretching in an arc from the South China Seas to Russia’s Kurils. 

For Japan the most vulnerable point is the Senkaku, to which Beijing has laid claims with surrounding isles, in particular Ishikagi 90 nautical miles away seen as the obvious targets.
Hundreds of fishing boats from China, escorted by coastguard ships, or, at times, warships have been in the seas leading, at times, driving back Japanese fishermen leading to clashes with Japanese coast guards. 

There has been a recent spate of incursions into airspace by Chinese warplanes and the appearance for the first time, a few weeks ago, of a nuclear attack submarine in these waters.
The Japanese government are now finalising the deployment of missiles batteries, anti-aircraft and anti-ship, radar installations and around 600 troops to Ishigaki.
Final details are likely to emerge next month. 

The Independent understands the surface to air missiles are likely include American made MIM-104 Patriots capable of taking down Chinese ballistic missiles with enemy vessels being targeted by SSM-1s which carry up to 500lbs of high-explosives and have range of over a hundred miles. 

There are future plans for a joint missile system involving Japan and Western Europe to be installed in a project involving the British, French and Italian MBDA and Mitsubishi Electrics.
China’s attempt at ocean hegemony has led to international reaction.
The US Defence Secretary General James Mattis stressed during a visit to Tokyo that the Washington is fully committed to backing Japan over the Senkakus. 

On a broader basis, the US has been sending warships through the China Seas to underline the right to freedom of navigation. 

The British Defence Secretary, Gavin Williamson, has announced that HMS Sutherland, an anti-submarine ship, will be sailing through the South China Seas. 

The navies of America, India, Japan and Australia, will be holding naval manoeuvres.

HMS Sutherland

The tiny Senkakus were used in the past by a small Japanese community scratching a living out of bonito fishing and collecting albatross feathers. 

But they were then abandoned had been lying unpopulated for 78 years with basically scientific and geographical exploration groups the only visitors.
That these five islets and three barren rocks, with a total area of just seven kilometres, has become a potential flashpoint for a conflict between two modern industrialised states may be reminiscent of the Jorge Luis Borges’s view that Britain and Argentina going to war over the Falklands was “like two bald men fighting over a comb”.
In fact, there was little interest in the islands, apart from its fishing grounds, until an international survey in 1969 concluded large undersea deposits of oil and natural gas. 

The following year China began its claims of ownership.
The steady growth of Chinese presence in the seas, say the Japanese, has damaged the country’s fishing industry. 

Many of Beijing’s coast guard vessels are rebranded warships and the crews of Chinese 'fishing' boats are not fishermen at all, but peoples’ militia in disguise out to provoke. 

The confrontation means that Ishigaki fishermen like Yukihidi Higa can no longer catch the red snappers and groupers they used to off the Senkakus.
“Of course it has affected my earnings, I can no longer go there because of the Chinese and their big ships” he stated. 

“ But they are not just taking the fish, most of the coral from the sea has been stripped over the years, this is not good for marine life.”
The missile deployment comes at a time of great controversy in Japan as premier Shinzo Abe seeks to revise Japan’s post-Second World War pacifist constitution mandated, he holds, by a strong election victory. 

Last month, his cabinet approved an increase of 1.3 per cent in the annual military budget raising it to a record $ 45.8 billion for the year.
The military deployment is also going to be a key factor in Ishigaki’s municipal election next month. “This is certainly going to be part of my campaign. It is of course a very important topic and it needs to be discussed fully and the city will have to agree on providing the land ” said Yoshitaka Nakayama, the mayor.
“I am in favour of the deployment by our Self Defence Forces (SDF). We have seen the Chinese behave very aggressively, they are coming into our territorial waters, our fishermen have been prevented from fishing, our coastguards are having lots of problems, we have seen their planes fly into our airspace. Putting the missile systems here will act as a warning, it may stop Chinese aggression and a conflict in the future.”
The military was a key issue in the election in Nago, the capital of the Okinawa prefecture, last week in the defeat of the incumbent Mayor Susumu Inamine, by Taketoyo Toguchi, a candidate backed by Mr Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).
The Mayor had been an opponent of a US Marines base remaining in Okinawa. 

Mr Toguchi wanted them to stay and backed a plan by Washington and Tokyo to relocate it from a central urban area to one less populated.
For Yoshiyuki Toita, the secretary general of the Yaeyama Defence Association, the result showed “that attitudes are changing: people are beginning to see the dangers posed by China, which is following an expansionist policy. If the Japanese government and the SDF do nothing it will send the wrong message and the Chinese will feel even bolder.”
The defence associations across Japan are private groups which claim to be independent of government. 

Mr Toita, however, is a member of Mayor Nakayama’s campaign and will be spreading his message in support of the military deployment.

"This is about security. We have achieved good things here in Ishigaki and we must protect this community and Japan.”
Many are apprehensive, however, that the achievements may be put at risk by militarisation. Subtropical Ishigaki, with its mountains and mangrove forests, beaches and birdlife, has, somewhat surprisingly for a place not widely known, topped TripAdvisor’s “Destinations on the Rise” in the Travellers’ Choice awards.
“We have definitely seen a steady rise in tourism and this growth has taken place despite this place being so remote. The new airport has been a great plus factor” said Hiro Uehara, the owner of a bar and restaurant.-
Around a dozen coast guard ships are the current line of defence. 

Captain Kenichi Kikuchi, in command of the Taketomi, wanted to stress that they do their utmost to avoid confrontations. 

“We are careful , we are careful because we do not want to escalate matters and also have to mind that the Chinese Navy ships as well their coastguard vessels tend to be large” he said. 

“ But we also do our duty and deal with problems when they arise and make sure we are not outnumbered by the Chinese.”-
What will happen when the missiles and troops are deployed? 

 “That is a decision for the Japanese government and the Self Defence Forces. They will decide what is right. But it could become very interesting.”-

Chinese Peril

China Is Competing With The U.S. For Military Control Over The Western Pacific
By Ralph Jennings

J-15 fighter jets are seen on the flight deck of China's sole aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, as it arrives in Hong Kong waters on July 7, 2017, less than a week after a high-profile visit by Xi Jinping. 

If you follow military rivalries in East Asia, start by learning the term “first island chain.” 

That term refers to the Kuril Islands of Russia, the Japanese archipelago, Taiwan, the northern Philippines and Borneo. 

If strung together on a map from north to south they form a chain past which China was informally blocked from push its military influence eastward into the open U.S.-dominated Pacific Ocean.
Now China is out to change that. 

An intelligence aircraft that it flew Saturday near southern outlying islands of Japan came as a recent example. 

The mission hackles in nearby Taiwan, which had watched a Chinese aircraft carrier encircle it nearly a year ago. 

In August, Taiwan sighted Chinese planes three times.

China's "First Island Chain"

China wants its world third-ranked armed forces to vie with No. 1, the United States, for influence in the western Pacific instead of being held in check behind the island chain.
“(The Saturday flight) fits a growing Chinese pattern of operating naval vessels and military aircraft beyond the ‘first island chain,’” says Joshua Pollack, editor of The Nonproliferation Review in Washington. 

“They want to project power there and ultimately push the U.S. further back, or be seen as able to do so.”

Historic U.S. control
The United States and Japan normally police much of the island chain to keep China, their old Cold War foe and rival in modern diplomacy, from passing through. 

Washington has held annual joint exercises with Manila, as well, and it sells advanced weapons to Taiwan.
“Sealed off by the occupants of the islands, the chain would present a formidable barrier to exit from or entry into the (east and south) China Seas,” the American research institution RAND Corp. says in a 2014 commentary. 

“This is an ideal opportunity for mischief-making at the PLA Navy’s expense. Contingents scattered on and around the islands and straits comprising the first island chain could give Beijing a bad day” in the case of “geopolitical controversy.”

China's aircraft carrier Liaoning (top L) sails past residential tower blocks in Hong Kong on July 7, 2017. 

The U.S. military has dominated the Pacific east of the island chain since the end of World War II. Over that time Japan has become a U.S. ally and China has focused more on big domestic issues than military expansion. 

Today the Hawaii-based U.S. Pacific Fleet patrols the western Pacific with some 200 ships and submarines, nearly 1,200 aircraft and more than 130,000 personnel.
Tokyo has backed that fleet through a U.S.-Japan security alliance. 

Their teamwork has grown from a 1951 deal on U.S. bases in Japan to training and exercises that bind U.S. troops with Japan’s military, which ranks as the world’s seventh strongest.

Enter China
China announced through official news media in 2013 it had “fulfilled its long-held dream of breaking through” the island chain after ships passed between Japan and Russia. 

The same year Beijing began regular air and naval missions to Japanese-controlled East China Sea waters where it disputes Tokyo’s claim to eight uninhabited islets. 

Xi Jinping is trying to tighten command over the military now so it gets better at farther-flung overseas missions, which in turn complement an across-the-board rise in China's international clout.
China’s intelligence aircraft as seen over the weekend “sends a message” around Asia that it “has its own sphere of influence and there’s a new normal,” says Alexander Huang, strategic studies professor at Tamkang University in Taiwan. 

Beijing's military probably hopes other countries drop any protests as it does reconnaissance of facilities operated by its Asian neighbors and the United States, he says. 

China's Abused Spouse

Hanoi looks to Washington for assistance only when China threatens—but, in its heart, Vietnam values its relationship with Beijing more.

By Tuong Vu

Master and servant

Relations between China and Vietnam have taken a dive since June, after Gen. Fan Changlong of China cut short his visit to Hanoi and canceled a cross-border gathering for the two militaries aimed to build mutual trust.
The cause of the dispute was an oil-drilling contract in the South China Sea that Hanoi had signed with the Spanish firm Repsol. 

This had happened before, but this time Beijing threatened to undertake military measures if Hanoi did not cease and desist. 

Within a week Vietnam had canceled the contract and agreed to pay Repsol millions of dollars in compensation.
China’s direct military threat to Vietnam indicates an escalation of tension in the South China Sea, and Hanoi’s quick kowtow to Beijing has led many to blame Donald Trump’s inward-oriented foreign policy.
This is unfair. 

A week later Defense Minister Ngô Xuân Lịch of Vietnam arrived in Washington to meet with his counterpart, Secretary of Defense James Mattis. 

Lịch, political commissar of the People’s Army of Vietnam, was known as a hard-line ideologue in Vietnamese politics. 

When he arrived in the US capital, however, he announced that, for the first time in bilateral history, Vietnam had accepted a proposal for a port visit by a US aircraft carrier.
The idea for such a visit had been floated many times. 

Most recently, as President-elect Trump made the suggestion, but it took Chinese military pressure for Vietnam’s top brass to warm to the idea. 

Lịch’s visit, in fact, fits a long-standing pattern of Vietnamese policy toward China and the United States. 

Hanoi looks to Washington for assistance only when China threatens—but, in its heart, Vietnam values its relationship with Beijing more.
Like Vietnam, China is a socialist country. 

The two communist parties’ relationship goes back to the 1920s, when a young Ho Chi Minh worked alongside fellow revolutionary Zhou Enlai to mobilize laborers in southern China. 

Soon after Mao Zedong and Zhou took power in China, they supported the Vietnamese revolution by sending arms and advisers, helping Ho’s army win a decisive battle against the French in 1954.
During the Vietnam War, Beijing was Hanoi’s big brother, as well as its most generous financier. Beijing sent Hanoi billions of dollars, as well as food and military aid. 

For much of the 1960s, more than 100,000 Chinese troops were stationed permanently in North Vietnam.
Relations turned dramatically as the war ended, however. 

Hanoi viewed Mao’s invitation for Richard Nixon to visit Beijing in 1972 as treachery. 

With both Beijing and Moscow courting Washington’s attention, and with Vietnam’s victory over the Americans in 1975, Vietnamese leaders began to imagine themselves as vanguards of world revolution. 

Their ambition to dominate Indochina riled Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, who sent half a million troops across the border in 1979 to teach the “ungrateful” Vietnamese a lesson.
The border war between the communist brothers lasted until the late 1980s. 

As the Soviet bloc collapsed and the US-led camp emerged triumphant, Hanoi felt threatened and quickly turned to Beijing, apologizing for the war and proposing a new anti-imperialist alliance. 

Although Beijing turned down the proposal, bilateral relations were restored in 1991.
To demonstrate that they had learned their lesson, Hanoi’s leaders changed their constitution to remove anti-China passages. 

While Vietnam celebrated the wars against France and the United States every year, the 1979 war with China was erased from public memory. 

State-controlled media were prohibited from publishing negative news about China, and editors who violated the ban were punished.
Vietnam restored relations with the US in 1995 and concluded a bilateral agreement in 2001. 

As market reforms gathered steam, Vietnam achieved remarkable success with its exports. 

The US became the leading market for Vietnamese exports, allowing the country to earn billions of dollars in trade surplus.
Despite the value of the American market for Vietnam, however, the US remained in the “not so close” category for Hanoi leaders. 

Washington’s criticism of Vietnam’s violations of human rights infuriated them, and the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq prompted deep anxiety. 

As recently as 2005, the PAVN still considered the United States a strategic enemy.
Across the border, bilateral relations between China and Vietnam thrived: Top leaders paid annual visits, as did representatives from the military, the Public Security Ministry, the Propaganda Department and other government organs. 

By 2011 China had overtaken the United States as Vietnam’s top trade partner, and by 2014 Vietnam’s trade with China was nearly twice its trade with the US.
Problems began in 2005, however, when China began aggressively enforcing its sovereignty claims over much of the South China Sea, dashing Vietnamese leaders’ hope that the camaraderie between the two parties would rise above narrow national interests. 

While pursuing several strategies in response to China’s rising threat, Hanoi assigned greater weight to talks between the two "fraternal" parties than to multilateral or legal approaches.
When China towed a giant oil rig within Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone in 2014, even as Hanoi sent Coast Guard ships to surround the Chinese naval force defending the rig, Nguyễn Phú Trọng tried to call President Xi Jinping of China a dozen times, hoping in vain that Xi would answer. 

On the streets Vietnamese people peacefully protesting China were beaten by security forces. 

Trọng later visited Washington, a first for a general secretary of the Vietnamese Communist Party.
After the oil-rig confrontation, criticisms of China appeared in the Vietnamese press. 

Nevertheless, there is no sign that Hanoi has fundamentally changed its strategy of making timid overtures to the United States only when Beijing acts up. 

Given the domination of Marxist-Leninist loyalists in the top leadership elected at the 12th Party Congress in 2016, change is unlikely.
Lịch’s welcome of a US aircraft carrier’s visit sends China a signal of displeasure, but isn’t a drastic policy u-turn. 

The Repsol affair left Hanoi with a bruised eye, and the country wants Beijing to know that it is unhappy. 

Still, like an abused spouse who calls the police after a beating but then doesn’t end the relationship, Hanoi will follow its heart and won’t break away from Beijing anytime soon.

Course Correction: How to Stop China's Maritime Advance

Washington should make clear that it can live with an uneasy stalemate in Asia—but not with Chinese hegemony. 
By Ely Ratner

The South China Sea is fast becoming the world’s most important waterway. 

As the main corridor between the Indian and Pacific Oceans, the sea carries one-third of global maritime trade, worth over $5 trillion, each year, $1.2 trillion of it going to or from the United States. 

The sea’s large oil and gas reserves and its vast fishing grounds, which produce 12 percent of the world’s annual catch, provide energy and food for Southeast Asia’s 620 million people.
But all is not well in the area. 

Six governments—in Brunei, China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam—have overlapping claims to hundreds of rocks and reefs that scatter the sea. 

Sovereignty over these territories not only serves as a source of national pride; it also confers hugely valuable rights to drill for oil, catch fish, and sail warships in the surrounding waters. 

For decades, therefore, these countries have contested one another’s claims, occasionally even resorting to violence. 

No single government has managed to dominate the area, and the United States has opted to remain neutral on the sovereignty disputes. 

In recent years, however, China has begun to assert its claims more vigorously and is now poised to seize control of the sea. 

Should it succeed, it would deal a devastating blow to the United States’ influence in the region, tilting the balance of power across Asia in China’s favor.
Time is running out to stop China’s advance. 

With current U.S. policy faltering, the Trump administration needs to take a firmer line. 

It should supplement diplomacy with deterrence by warning China that if the aggression continues, the United States will abandon its neutrality and help countries in the region defend their claims. 

Washington should make clear that it can live with an uneasy stalemate in Asia—but not with Chinese hegemony.

ON THE MARCH
China has asserted “indisputable sovereignty” over all the land features in the South China Sea and claimed maritime rights over the waters within its “nine-dash line,” which snakes along the shores of the other claimants and engulfs almost the entire sea. 

Although China has long lacked the military power to enforce these claims, that is rapidly changing. After the 2008 financial crisis, moreover, the West’s economic woes convinced Beijing that the time was ripe for China to flex its muscles.
Since then, China has taken a series of actions to exert control over the South China Sea. 

In 2009, Chinese ships harassed the U.S. ocean surveillance ship Impeccable while it was conducting routine operations in the area. 

In 2011, Chinese patrol vessels cut the cables of a Vietnamese ship exploring for oil and gas. 

In 2012, the Chinese navy and coast guard seized and blockaded Scarborough Shoal, a contested reef in the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone. 

In 2013, China sent an armed coast guard ship into Indonesian waters to demand the return of a Chinese crew detained by the Indonesian authorities for illegally fishing around Indonesia’s Natuna Islands.
Then, in early 2014, China’s efforts to assert authority over the South China Sea went from a trot to a gallop. 

Chinese ships began massive dredging projects to reclaim land around seven reefs that China already controlled in the Spratly Islands, an archipelago in the sea’s southern half. 

In an 18-month period, China reclaimed nearly 3,000 acres of land. (By contrast, over the preceding several decades, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam had reclaimed a combined total of less than 150 acres.) 

Despite assurances by Xi Jinping in September 2015 that China had “no intention to militarize” the South China Sea, it has been rapidly transforming its artificial islands into advanced military bases, replete with airfields, runways, ports, and antiaircraft and antimissile systems. 

In short order, China has laid the foundation for control of the South China Sea.
Should China succeed in this endeavor, it will be poised to establish a vast zone of influence off its southern coast, leaving other countries in the region with little choice but to bend to its will. 

This would hobble U.S. alliances and partnerships, threaten U.S. access to the region’s markets and resources, and limit the United States’ ability to project military power and political influence in Asia.

Chinese soldiers on Woody Island in the Paracel Archipelago, January 2016.
MISSING: AMERICA
Despite the enormous stakes, the United States has failed to stop China’s assertiveness in the South China Sea. 

For the most part, Washington has believed that as China grew more powerful and engaged more with the world, it would naturally come to accept international rules and norms. 

For over a decade, the lodestar of U.S. policy has been to mold China into what U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick described in 2005 as “a responsible stakeholder”—which would uphold the international system or, at the least, cooperate with established powers to revise the global order. 

U.S. policymakers argued that they could better address most global challenges with Beijing on board.
The United States complemented its plan to integrate China into the prevailing system with efforts to reduce the odds of confrontation. 

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke of the need to “write a new answer to the question of what happens when an established power and a rising power meet.” 

She was referring to the danger of falling into “the Thucydides trap,” conflict between an existing power and an emerging one. 

As the Athenian historian wrote, “It was the rise of Athens, and the fear that this inspired in Sparta, that made war inevitable.” 

Wary of a similar outcome, U.S. policymakers looked for ways to reduce tensions and avoid conflict whenever possible.
This approach has had its successes. 

The Paris climate accord and the Iran nuclear deal were both the direct result of bilateral efforts to solve global problems together. 

Meanwhile, U.S. and Chinese officials interacted frequently, reducing misperceptions and perhaps even warding off major crises that could have led to outright conflict.
Applying this playbook to the South China Sea, the Obama administration put diplomatic pressure on all the claimants to resolve their disputes peacefully in accordance with international law. 

To deter China from using force, the United States augmented its military presence in the region while deepening its alliances and partnerships as part of a larger “rebalance” to Asia. 

And although Beijing rarely saw it this way, the United States took care not to pick sides in the sovereignty disputes, for example, sending its ships to conduct freedom-of-navigation operations in waters claimed by multiple countries, not just by China.
Although this strategy helped the United States avoid major crises, it did not arrest China’s march in the South China Sea. 

In 2015, repeating a view that U.S. officials have conveyed for well over a decade, Barack Obama said in a joint press conference with Xi, “The United States welcomes the rise of a China that is peaceful, stable, prosperous, and a responsible player in global affairs.” 

Yet Washington never made clear what it would do if Beijing failed to live up to that standard—as it often has in recent years. 

The United States’ desire to avoid conflict meant that nearly every time China acted assertively or defied international law in the South China Sea, Washington instinctively took steps to reduce tensions, thereby allowing China to make incremental gains.
This would be a sound strategy if avoiding war were the only challenge posed by China’s rise. 

But it is not. 

U.S. military power and alliances continue to deter China from initiating a major military confrontation with the United States, but they have not constrained China’s creeping sphere of influence. 

Instead, U.S. risk aversion has allowed China to reach the brink of total control over the South China Sea.
U.S. policymakers should recognize that China’s behavior in the sea is based on its perception of how the United States will respond. 

The lack of U.S. resistance has led Beijing to conclude that the United States will not compromise its relationship with China over the South China Sea. 

As a result, the biggest threat to the United States today in Asia is Chinese hegemony, not great-power war. 

U.S. regional leadership is much more likely to go out with a whimper than with a bang.

THE FINAL SPRINT
The good news is that although China has made huge strides toward full control of the South China Sea, it is not there yet. 

To complete its takeover, it will need to reclaim more land, particularly at Scarborough Shoal, in the eastern part of the sea, where it currently lacks a base of operations. 

Then, it will need to develop the ability to deny foreign militaries access to the sea and the airspace above it, by deploying a range of advanced military equipment to its bases—fighter aircraft, antiship cruise missiles, long-range air defenses, and more.
The United States has previously sought to prevent China from taking such steps. 

In recent years, Washington has encouraged Beijing and the other claimants to adopt a policy of “three halts”: no further land reclamation, no new infrastructure, and no militarization of existing facilities. 

But it never explained the consequences of defying these requests. 

On several occasions, the United States, along with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the G-7, and the EU, criticized China’s moves. 

But each time, Beijing largely ignored the condemnation, and other countries did not press the issue for long.
Consider Beijing’s reaction to the landmark decision handed down in July 2016 by an international tribunal constituted under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which ruled that most of China’s claims in the South China Sea were illegal under international law. 

The United States and other countries called on China to abide by the decision but took no steps to enforce it. 

So China simply shrugged it off and continued to militarize the islands and police the waters around them. 

Although the United States has continued to make significant shows of force in the region through military exercises and patrols, it has never made clear to China what these are meant to signal. 

U.S. officials have often considered them “demonstrations of resolve.” 

But they never explained what, exactly, the United States was resolved to do. 

With that question unanswered, the Chinese leadership has had little reason to reverse course.
For the same reason, Donald Trump’s idea of reviving President Ronald Reagan’s strategy of “peace through strength” by beefing up the U.S. military will not hold China back on its own. 

The problem has never been that China does not respect U.S. military might. 

On the contrary, it fears that it would suffer badly in a war with the United States. 

But China also believes that the United States will impose only small costs for misdeeds that stop short of outright aggression. 

No matter how many more warships, fighter jets, and nuclear weapons the United States builds, that calculus will not change.

Chinese structures in the Spratly Islands, April 2017.
DARE TO ACT
In order to alter China’s incentives, the United States should issue a clear warning: that if China continues to construct artificial islands or stations powerful military assets, such as long-range missiles or combat aircraft, on those it has already built, the United States will fundamentally change its policy toward the South China Sea. 

Shedding its position of neutrality, Washington would stop calling for restraint and instead increase its efforts to help the region’s countries defend themselves against Chinese coercion.
In this scenario, the United States would work with the other countries with claims in the sea to reclaim land around their occupied territories and to fortify their bases. 

It would also conduct joint exercises with their militaries and sell them the type of weapons that are known to military specialists as “counterintervention” capabilities, to give them affordable tools to deter Chinese military coercion in and around the area. 

These weapons should include surveillance drones, sea mines, land-based antiship missiles, fast-attack missile boats, and mobile air defenses.
A program like this would make China’s efforts to dominate the sea and the airspace above it considerably riskier for Beijing. 

The United States would not aim to amass enough collective firepower to defeat the People’s Liberation Army, or even to control large swaths of the sea; instead, the goal would be for partners in the region to have the ability to deny China access to important waterways, nearby coastlines, and maritime chokepoints.
Beijing will not compromise as long as it finds itself pushing on an open door.
The United States should turn to allies and partners that already have close security ties in Southeast Asia for help. 

Japan could prove especially valuable, since it already sees China as a threat, works closely with several countries around the South China Sea, and is currently developing its own defenses against Chinese encroachment on its outer islands in the East China Sea. 

Australia, meanwhile, enjoys closer relations with Indonesia and Malaysia than does the United States, as does India with Vietnam—ties that would allow Australia and India to give these countries significantly more military heft than Washington could provide on its own.
Should Beijing refuse to change course, Washington should also negotiate new agreements with countries in the region to allow U.S. and other friendly forces to visit or, in some cases, be permanently stationed on their bases in the South China Sea.

It should consider seeking access to Itu Aba Island (occupied by Taiwan), Thitu Island (occupied by the Philippines), and Spratly Island (occupied by Vietnam)—members of the Spratly Islands archipelago and the first-, second-, and fourth-largest naturally occurring islands in the sea, respectively. 

In addition to making it easier for the United States and its partners to train together, having forces on these islands would create new tripwires for China, increasing the risks associated with military coercion.
This new deterrent would present Beijing with a stark choice: on the one hand, it can further militarize the South China Sea and face off against countries with increasingly advanced bases and militaries, backed by U.S. power, or, on the other hand, it can stop militarizing the islands, abandon plans for further land reclamation, and start working seriously to find a diplomatic solution.

KEEPING THE PEACE
For this strategy to succeed, countries in the region will need to invest in stronger militaries and work more closely with the United States. 

Fortunately, this is already happening. 

Vietnam has purchased an expensive submarine fleet from Russia to deter China; Taiwan recently announced plans to build its own. 

Indonesia has stepped up military exercises near its resource-rich Natuna Islands. 

And despite Rodrigo Duterte’s hostile rhetoric, the Philippines has not canceled plans to eventually allow the United States to station more warships and planes at Philippine ports and airfields along the eastern edge of the South China Sea.
But significant barriers remain. 

Many countries in the region fear that China will retaliate with economic penalties if they partner with the United States. 

In the wake of Trump’s withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, Southeast Asian countries are increasingly convinced that it is inevitable that China will dominate the economic order in the region, even as many are concerned by that prospect. 

This growing perception will make countries in the region reluctant to enter into new military activities with the United States for fear of Chinese retribution. 

The only way for Washington to prevent this dangerous trend is to offer a viable alternative to economic dependence on China. 

That could mean reviving a version of the TPP or proposing a new and equally ambitious initiative on regional trade and investment. 

The United States cannot beat something with nothing.
Washington should also do more to shape the domestic politics of countries with claims in the South China Sea by publicly disseminating more information about China’s activities in the sea. 

Journalists and defense specialists currently have to rely on sporadic and incomplete commercial satellite images to understand China’s actions. 

The U.S. government should supplement these with regular reports and images of China’s weapons deployments, as well as of Chinese navy and coast guard ships and Chinese state-backed fishing vessels illegally operating in other countries’ exclusive economic zones and territorial waters.
Countries in the region will also be more likely to cooperate with Washington if they can count on the United States to uphold international law. 

To that end, the U.S. Navy should conduct freedom-of-navigation patrols in the South China Sea regularly, not just when Washington wants to make a diplomatic point.
Critics of a more muscular deterrent argue that it would only encourage China to double down on militarization. 

But over the last few years, the United States has proved that by communicating credible consequences, it can change China’s behavior. 

In 2015, when the Obama administration threatened to impose sanctions in response to Chinese state-sponsored theft of U.S. commercial secrets, the Chinese government quickly curbed its illicit cyber-activities. 

And in the waning months of the Obama administration, Beijing finally began to crack down on Chinese firms illegally doing business with North Korea after Washington said that it would otherwise impose financial penalties on Chinese companies that were evading the sanctions against North Korea.
Moreover, greater pushback by the United States will not, as some have asserted, embolden the hawks in the Chinese leadership. 

In fact, those in Beijing advocating more militarization of the South China Sea have done so on the grounds that the United States is irresolute, not that it is belligerent. 

The only real chance for a peaceful solution to the disputes lies in stopping China’s momentum. 

Beijing will not compromise as long as it finds itself pushing on an open door. 

And in the event that China failed to back down from its revisionist path, the United States could live with a more militarized South China Sea, as long as the balance of power did not tilt excessively in China’s favor. 

This is why China would find a U.S. threat to ratchet up military support for other countries with claims in the sea credible. 

Ensuring that countries in the region can contribute to deterring Chinese aggression would provide more stability than relying solely on Chinese goodwill or the U.S. military to keep the peace. Admittedly, with so many armed forces operating in such a tense environment, the countries would need to develop new mechanisms to manage crises and avoid unintended escalation. 

But in recent years, ASEAN has made significant progress on this front by devising new measures to build confidence among the region’s militaries, efforts that the United States should support.
Finally, some critics of a more robust U.S. strategy claim that the South China Sea simply isn’t worth the trouble, since a Chinese sphere of influence would likely prove benign. 

But given Beijing’s increasing willingness to use economic and military pressure for political ends, this bet is growing riskier by the day. 

And even if Chinese control began peacefully, there would be no guarantee that it would stay peaceful. 

The best way to keep the sea conflict free is for the United States to do what has served it so well for over a century: prevent any other power from commanding it.

Impoverished Laos Shows Resistance To Becoming A Client State Of China

By Ralph Jennings

Laos typically welcomes help from China. 

About 23% of the landlocked Southeast Asian country’s 6.8 million people live in poverty. 

Rural infrastructure lags behind most of its neighbors. 

So the Lao government supports growing investment from China as part of the “Belt and Road” program, a 4-year-old effort to extend the giant country’s trade and infrastructure network across Asia into Europe. 

A bellwether 414-kilometer China-Laos railway that broke ground in December is one of the “most important” projects in the Lao government’s economic development plan through 2020, Chinese official Xinhua News Agency said in a report this week.
Laos and China are both communist. 

They share a land border. 

No wonder Laos, with a GDP of just $12 billion, sometimes gets described as a client state of the world’s second-largest economy. 

But China is not the biggest foreign investor in Laos, by some measures, and pockets of resistance are emerging to the quick surge in Chinese projects.
Vietnam led other countries in 2015 in value of approved projects. 

Vietnamese firms parked more than $466 million that year, followed by Malaysia with projects worth about $430 million, according to Lao government statistics. 

Vietnam invested largely in farming, energy and natural resources, spawning 40,000 jobs, this Vietnamese news report says. 

Malaysian investment since 2000 has gone toward finance, insurance, construction and tourism. China ranked third in 2015 at about $89 million on the same list.
Singapore is now a rising star investor. 

The total 70 Singaporean-funded projects in Laos cover industry, property and farming, the Singapore Business Federation says. 

Total capitalized investment of $175 million makes Singapore the 11th biggest foreign investor by volume.

This photo taken in 2011 shows a woman working in front of her home inside Bopiat village in the Northern province of Louang Namtha where Chinese workers were doing soil analyses in preparation for a railway linking China to Laos.

Varied sources of aid and investment would put Laos, with a GDP of just 12 billion, in a league of other relatively poor Southeast Asian countries. 

Indonesia, Myanmar and Vietnam, for example, accept big blocks of investment and trade from China. 

At the same time they welcome investment from Japan, elsewhere in Southeast Asia and Western countries partly to keep Chinese influence in check. 

Beijing might tap too many natural resources, edge out domestic companies or seek political cooperation that the other country isn’t ready to offer.
China is promoting the “Belt and Road” initiative to give its companies space to expand outside a big but constrained domestic market while bolstering its geopolitical clout against old rival Japan.
“Although Sino-Laos relations have been relatively smooth and economic cooperation is on the rise, Laos is not completely subordinate to China,” says Yun Sun, senior associate with the East Asia Program under Washington-based think tank the Stimson Center. 

“Vietnam also has major influence in Laos, and the Laos government has not been completely acquiescent to Chinese views and projects.”
Chinese enterprises sometimes spar with “local authorities and residents” over land use and threats of environmental degradation, the Shanghai Institute for International Studies says in a 2016 paper. People believe Chinese companies and Chinese employees cause degradation associated with investments such as hydro-power plants, the paper says. 

“The strict control and management of land use imposes a hard constraint on Chinese companies,” it adds.
Laos, if it lets China invest too heavily, risks giving up potential jobs to Chinese workers as well, Sun adds.
The railway line that may shape up as a test case for Laos' acceptance of Chinese investment. 

It’s unclear how the $5.8 billion project will help Laos because it depends just lightly on trade, analysts say. 

A Lao official told Xinhua it should help farm production, cut travel costs, create jobs and attract more foreign investment.
But it may offer few jobs while causing “environmental degradation, land confiscation, and forced relocation,” says Andrea Giorgetta, Asia desk director with the International Federation for Human Rights in Bangkok. 

“Many communities have already had their land confiscated without receiving any compensation,” Giorgetta says. 

Conversely, she says, “the strategic importance of Laos for China is massive, as the country is crucial to give Beijing access to Southeast Asia's markets, natural resources, and infrastructure.”

"This will be the death of the Mekong"

China's Silk Road push in Thailand may founder on Mekong River row

By Brenda Goh and Andrew R.C. Marshall | KHON PI LONG, THAILAND

A Chinese boat, with a team of geologists, surveys the Mekong River at border between Laos and Thailand April 23, 2017. Picture taken April 23, 2017.

A boat navigates along the rapids, at the Mekong River, at the border between Laos and Thailand April 23, 2017. Picture taken April 23, 2017.

A sticker is seen at the Thailand side of the Mekong River, at the border between Laos and Thailand April 23, 2017. Picture taken April 23, 2017.

A Chinese boat with a team of geologists surveys the Mekong River, at the border between Laos and Thailand April 23, 2017. Picture taken April 23, 2017.

A Chinese team of geologists surveys the Mekong River banks, at the Laos side, at the border between Laos and Thailand April 23, 2017. Picture taken April 23, 2017.

A protest banner demanding to stop rapids blasting at the Mekong River, is seen at the border between Laos and Thailand April 24, 2017. Picture taken April 24, 2017.

Thailand's Professor Niwat Roykaew, Chairman of Rak Chiang Khong Conservation Group, poses during an interview with Reuters, by the Mekong River, at the border between Laos and Thailand April 23, 2017. Picture taken April 23, 2017. 

China's plan to blast open more of the Mekong River for bigger cargo ships could founder on a remote outcrop of half-submerged rocks that Thai protesters have vowed to protect against Beijing's economic expansion in Southeast Asia.
Dynamiting the Pi Long rapids and other sections of the Mekong between Thailand and Laos will harm the environment and bring trade advantages only to China, the protesters say.
"This will be the death of the Mekong," said Niwat Roykaew, chairman of the Rak Chiang Khong Conservation Group, which is campaigning against the project. 

"You'll never be able to revive it."
Niwat said blasting the Mekong will destroy fish breeding grounds, disrupt migrating birds and cause increased water flow that will erode riverside farmland.
Such opposition reflects a wider challenge to China's ambitious "One Belt, One Road" project to build a modern-day Silk Road through Asia to Europe.
Second Harbour Consultants, a subsidiary of state-owned behemoth China Communications Construction Corp (CCCC) said it was surveying the Mekong for a report that China, Laos, Myanmar and Thailand would use to decide whether blasting should go ahead.
It added that it was not tasked with the blasting work, which would need to be tendered.
The company said in an e-mail it had held meetings with local people "to communicate, build confidence and clear doubts."
China's foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Clearing the Mekong for bigger ships is not officially a part of One Belt, One Road, a project announced in 2013; China blasted sections of the river in Laos several years earlier.
But some Chinese engineers involved in the survey speak of it as a part of the broader plan, and it is consistent with Beijing's Silk Road objectives.
Even in its Southeast Asian backyard, where it has sympathetic governments and ancient historical ties, China sometimes struggles to convince ordinary people that One Belt One Road will benefit them.
Thailand, Laos and Myanmar have approved the survey work, which is funded by China, but further studies and approvals are needed before blasting.

KEEPING A LOW PROFILE
The Mekong River originates in the Tibetan plateau and cascades through China and five Southeast Asian countries.
China has built a series of dams along its stretch of the river that has impacted the water flow and made the regional giant hard to trust.
Chinese flags now flutter from company speedboats, while CCCC Second Harbour has met with Thai protesters three times since December in a bid to avert opposition to their work.
A unit of the conglomerate faced violent protests in January in Sri Lanka, where people objected to plans for an industrial zone in the south.
Chinese engineers on the Mekong said they were worried that Thai protesters would board the rickety cargo ship where they slept, prompting them to moor it on the Laotian side of the Mekong each night.
"We are afraid for our team's safety," one engineer told Reuters, declining to be named because he wasn't authorized to speak to the media.
"We keep a low profile here," he added. 

"We want to do this project well and benefit Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, China, these four countries. This is not just for China."
China wants to remove rocks and sandbanks to allow ships of up to 500 tonnes to sail from its landlocked province of Yunnan to the sleepy Laotian town of Luang Prabang.
That would expedite the shipping of Chinese freight deep into northern Laos, said Paul Chambers, an expert in international relations at Thailand's Naresuan University.
"Luang Prabang may seem sleepy, but northern Laos represents a hub of Chinese influence," he said.

LOCALS REMAIN WARY
Despite reassurances from CCCC Second Harbour, locals still believed the engineers were marking out areas for blasting, said Niwat, who represented campaigners in meetings with the Chinese company.
His group draped a large white banner reading "Mekong Not For Sale" on the bank overlooking the Pi Long rapids, whose name in Thai means "lost ghosts."
"At the moment we're only thinking about the economy and the earning figures without considering the unimaginable value of the eco-system to humanity," he said.
The military seized power in Thailand in 2014 and banned gatherings of five or more people.
But Narongsak Osotthanakorn, governor of Chiang Rai -- the Thai province where the Mekong is currently being surveyed -- said people could "protest freely" against the Chinese plan.
Narongsak said the survey was the first stage in a process that would include an environmental study, public hearings and negotiations between China, Thailand, Myanmar and Laos.